Year of publication 2014

Capacity building in forestry in all its forms is a central work area for the African Forest Forum (AFF). It was on this basis that AFF organized a workshop on capacity building and skills development in forest-based climate change adaptation and mitigation in Nairobi, Kenya on November 12-16, 2012. The workshop identified the training needs on addressing the relationship between forests and climate change for educational and related forestry based training institutions at professional and technical levels, as well as for informal groups that are mainly made up of civil society organizations and local communities. These training modules are the result of that workshop and therefore are meant to fill the gaps observed by the training institutions. The overall objective of the training is to build and strengthen the capacity of professionals to understand, explain, and work with the linkages between forests and climate change, particularly taking actions that could strengthen the role of forests in climate change mitigation and adaptation. In order to carry this work forward AFF organized, in 2013, four sub-regional workshops to first improve on the needs and contents of the modules as well as validating the same. The workshops also served as avenues to better orient/ retool staff from academic, research, extension and civil society organizations in key areas of science and practice of climate change as it relates to forests, and basing such training on these modules. In 2013, AFF conducted country training using the modules in Ethiopia, Niger and Zambia.